P27 Evidence-informed decision-making: theories, methods and innovative practices

Panel Members & Contact Details

Dr Eleanor MacKillop, Wales Centre for Public Policy, Cardiff University, Research Fellow. Email: Eleanor.mackillop@wcpp.org.uk

Dr Hannah Durrant, Wales Centre for Public Policy, Cardiff University, Senior Research Fellow. Email: Hannah.durrant@wcpp.org.uk

Professor James Downe, Wales Centre for Public Policy, Cardiff University, Director of Research.

Summary

This panel explores the evolving role of evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) in public management amid rising populism, misinformation, and global crises. It invites contributions that examine how evidence is mobilized, interpreted, and applied across diverse contexts, disciplines, and governance levels, with a focus on conceptual frameworks, actors, and impacts. Through comparative and interdisciplinary research, the panel aims to deepen understanding of EIDM practices and foster innovation in how public institutions use knowledge to inform policy and improve outcomes.

Description

Over the last decades, there has been growing interest in the role and influence of evidence or knowledge on public management, with huge government investments worldwide into evidence-informed decision-making at different levels. Concurrently, we are witnessing the rise of populist movements across the world who are denouncing science and evidence, with misinformation and disinformation becoming commonly used practices of politicians and other decision-makers. In this context, the value of science and wider knowledge to policy, public management and society is being interrogated. Finally, complex issues such as climate change, ageing populations, and enduring poverty and discriminations are making the need for evidence – especially different types of evidence from Randomised Control Trials to lived experience – even more urgent.

Evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) is at a crucial crossroad where its funding, processes and impact are being challenged. Questions have been raised about how to transfer, translate, and mobilise evidence across the boundaries of knowledge generation and use, and where that function should be situated. Underlying questions on knowledge brokering infrastructure are concerns about what structures are effective, how they should be funded, and what the processes, practices, aims and goals should be. Questions of independence, accountability, robustness and variety of sources of knowledge are also frequently asked. These debates are happening in a multiplicity of places. As the pace of change and funding of such initiatives increases, it is important to pause and reflect on these questions and how best to address them.

We are still discovering how best to document and evaluate processes of mobilising knowledge, with different disciplines, conceptualisations and methods helping to inform how we understand these processes and their effectiveness. Examples of practice are emerging with few links being made across services, organisations, administrations and places. This panel will discuss how to conceptualise the relationship between evidence and policy/public management, how to study processes of knowledge mobilisation, and analyse existing practice in different contexts. By drawing on research from different contexts and perspectives, especially with comparative analyses, we aim to reflect on the different practices of evidence use and their impact.

We especially welcome contributions that explore the following topics and questions:

• How does EIDM look in different contexts, e.g., country, institutional setting, levels of decision-making, policy domain?
• What can be learned and improved in EIDM by innovatively building on different disciplinary and conceptual frameworks?
• How can EIDM be studied to understand how it works and what it delivers?
• What are the factors, contextually and/or others, that influence how EIDM is organised?
• Who are the actors involved in EIDM?
• What counts as evidence and knowledge in different contexts of decision-making and what are the consequences of this? E.g., how can public management integrate different sources of evidence and voices?
• What innovative approaches and best practice are in use in EIDM?               
• How can we assess the impact of EIDM approaches and tools?

Relevance

The panel spans a multiplicity of issues and topics central to current public management scholarship such as how to inform public management, how to make best use of resources, and how to address wicked complex issues. All these topics bring to the fore the importance of evidence and knowledge. With regards to the conference themes, this panel seeks to be a space where big events worldwide such as the rise of populism, the threat to technocratic models, fake news, disinformation and the defunding of public research can be discussed via the lens of theory, methods and comparative research by focusing on evidence and its centrality to this question. Constrained resources and growing economic and social unrest require innovative practice and decision-making where evidence can play a central role if it understood where to find it, how to assess it, integrate it in decision-making, and understand its relevance and impact.